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UT Mobile Stroke Unit saves man stricken during flight

Stroke victim Gerald Sandlin credits a one of a kind specialized mobile stroke unit and his doctors with saving his life.

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Barbara Sandlin (right) jokes with her husband Gerald in his hospital room at Methodist University Hospital. On Tuesday, Gerald suffered a stoke while the Alabama couple, who have been married for 34 years, was flying home from visiting family in Oregon. The airline made an emergency landing at the Memphis International Airport, where a mobile stroke unit met them on the tarmac. Gerald Sandlin credits the one-of-a-kind specialized ambulance and his doctors with saving his life.(Photo: Mark Weber/The Commercial Appeal)Buy Photo

Gerald Sandlin practically hopped out of bed, which is saying something for a man who two days earlier suffered a near-fatal stroke some 30,000 feet up in the air.

"I feel good. I feel in control again," said Sandlin, 73, as he walked the halls of Methodist University Hospital on Thursday afternoon.

Culminating a recovery that's been nothing short of dramatic, the retired store manager should be released from the hospital Friday. He and his wife Barbara then will be able to make it back to their home in Vinemont, Alabama.

How they even wound up in Memphis is a tale of luck — both bad and good — and an expensive new medical asset located here.

The Sandlins were on a Delta Airlines flight from Salt Lake City to Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon when — somewhere over Colorado, doctors believe — his basilar artery became totally blocked. Because the basilar lies at the front of the brain stem, and is a critical blood-supply conduit between the brain and rest of the body, a blockage is typically catastrophic.

"It's one of the worst things that can happen to a human being," said Dr. Adam Arthur, a neurosurgeon Methodist University who operates on stroke patients.

Basilar artery thrombosis, as strokes such as Sandlin's are known, can cause death, or a condition called "Locked-in syndrome," in which a patient is aware and can still think, but can't speak or move. "As far as I'm concerned, it's a fate worse than death," Arthur said.

On the plane, Sandlin lost use of the right side of his body. His right arm and leg went limp, the right side of his face fell. He couldn't even keep his right eye open.

Sandlin's condition prompted the flight crew to arrange for an emergency landing in what by then was the nearest city: Memphis. And that's where the good-luck side of his tale emerges.

Memphis is home to a mobile stroke unit operated by the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. The 14-ton unit, purchased in 2015 at a cost of $1.1 million, is one of only eight operating in the U.S., said Dr. Andrei Alexandrov, medical director of the stroke program at Methodist University and a neurology professor at UTHSC.

It was waiting on the tarmac for the flight carrying the Sandlins.

Within a minute of being brought into the unit, which UT officials call a primary stroke center on wheels, Sandlin underwent a CT-angiography scan that clearly illuminated the thrombosis.

Minutes later, a clot-busting drug was administered, and the patient was rushed to Methodist University, where Arthur removed the clot by inserting a catheter and having it sucked out.

"If he went anywhere else, he probably would be delayed a couple of hours," Alexandrov said.

His wife, Dr. Anne Alexandrov, the chief nurse practitioner on the mobile unit, said that in stroke cases, each minute of delay can kill 2 million brain cells.

"In this man's case, he likely would've died" without the mobile unit, she said. "He was in big trouble."

Anne Alexandrov said she told the Delta pilot he saved Sandlin's life by making the emergency landing in Memphis. "They picked the right city," she said.

For Sandlin, a Vietnam veteran who was part of an air-assault unit, the experience changed his mind about Delta. The day before, he had been angry at the airline for canceling a flight. The Sandlins were traveling from Oregon, visiting family, back home to Alabama.

He remembers being "in and out" of lucidity on the plane after the stroke. "The scariest part was leaving her (Barbara)" to be rushed to the stroke unit.

Sandlin said he feels fine and is grateful to the stroke unit crew and the hospital staff.